By Ikechukwu Amaechi
Former Lagos State Governor and chieftain of the All Progressives Congress, APC, Bola Tinubu, made a profound statement when he paid a condolence visit to the family of elder statesman and Afenifere leader, Reuben Fasoranti, in Akure on July 14, 2019. Fasoranti’s daughter, Funke Olakunrin, was gunned down two days earlier at Ore junction on the Sagamu-Benin highway, and her driver, Tayo Ogundare, said hooded men emerged from the bush to attack them.
Announcing the tragedy
the same day, the then Afenifere spokesperson, Yinka Odumakin, blamed herdsmen
for it. His claim was echoed by the deceased’s brother, Kehinde Fasoranti, who
told journalists that policemen at Ore police station confirmed that his sister
was killed by herdsmen.
Tinubu was not impressed and cautioned against stigmatising herdsmen. “I am extremely concerned about security but I don’t want stigma. I can go through history of kidnapping and we know how it started, where it all started. There are lots of copycats. How many years ago have we faced insecurity in this country and cases of kidnapping?
Is Evans a herdsman who was
arrested?” he asked. Then, what seem like an alibi for herdsmen. “I don’t want
to be political, I will ask you where are the cows?” he asked journalists.
Tinubu was right even though he was being sarcastic and many Nigerians,
particularly his Yoruba kinsmen, rightly took umbrage at what they perceived as
an unfortunate sarcasm.
But speaking tongue-in-cheek,
as he did, does not detract from his message, which is, can there really be
herdsmen without a herd of domesticated animals? The answer is no.
A herdsman looks after a herd of
animals such as cattle or goats. And those who killed Olakunrin were not
herdsmen. They were armed terrorists. For too long, Nigerians have been
deceived by their leaders that there is a conflict between farmers and herders.
But that is a false narrative that obfuscates issues and misleads.
What have those who go in the
dead of the night to sack entire villages, kill and maim indigenes and occupy
their ancestral homes got to do with the quest for herders to rediscover
age-long grazing routes? What has farmers-herders conflict got to do with
abduction of students and demand for millions of naira ransom?
Do they want to convert the
schools to grazing reserves? This false narrative has been pushed by no less a
person than President Muhammadu Buhari and top officials of his administration.
But there is no intractable conflict between farmers and herders in Nigeria, at
least not one that accounts for the ongoing horrendous bloodbath. Fulani
herdsmen have always co-habited with other ethnic nationalities across the
country. Desert encroachment is not a new phenomenon.
So, when
Buhari tells his Attorney General and Minister of Justice, Abubakar Malami, to
dig up a so-called First Republic grazing gazette as a solution to the acts of
terror that is about to consume the country, he is being economical with the
truth. Adopting the euphemism of banditry is equally deceitful.
This is terrorism. Simple! Many people have wondered why the
country is unable to tame these hoodlums. The answer is simple. Those in
positions of authority are pretending that what ails Nigeria is malaria
(herders-farmers crisis) when it is malignant tumor (full-blown terrorism).
And Buhari knows it. That is why there is no solution in sight.
But he should be very careful. Enabling terrorists and terrorism is a slippery
slope. Anyone in doubt should ask Buhari’s alter-ego, Nasir el-Rufai, Kaduna
State Governor. On July 15, 2012, el-Rufai tweeted boastfully: “We will write
this for all to read. Anyone, soldier or not that kills the Fulani takes a loan
repayable one day no matter how long it takes.”
And what
was his angst? He was miffed that the administration of President Goodluck
Jonathan was waging a war against terrorists, some of them Fulani, in the
North. And true to his word, when he became Governor in 2015, he told his
Fulani kinsmen that one of their own has ascended the throne.
Rather than waging war against terrorists, he went looking for
them in their own countries with sacks of tax-payers’ money for alimony. But as
John F. Kennedy, former U.S. President once said: “Those who foolishly sought
power by riding the back of the tiger ended up inside.” El-Rufai has found out
to his chagrin why those who ride a tiger are always afraid to dismount.
This week, his government disclosed that bandits killed 222
people, injured 266 and kidnapped 774 in the last three months, and have
started collecting protection levies from farmers in communities across the 12
local government areas of Kaduna State.
“Many farmers in these areas, fearing for their
lives and safety, have abandoned their fields altogether. This has already
begun to affect crop yields, and the threat of food insecurity looms large,”
Commissioner for Internal Security and Home Affairs, Samuel Aruwan, told
el-Rufai and other top government officials on Tuesday.
Receiving the security report,
a highly flustered el-Rufai simply called on citizens to be law-abiding –
whatever that means. The swagger is gone. That is the danger inherent in
condoning evil and pampering terrorists. In the same Kaduna State, terrorists
have attacked five schools and abducted 204 students since January. Last
Friday, the State Commissioner of Police, Umar Muri, told the visiting
Inspector General of Police, Alkali Baba Usman, that Kaduna State, the capital
of Northern Nigeria, has become a failed state, literally.
Highways in the state –
Kaduna-Abuja highway, Kaduna-Birnin Gwari Road and Kaduna-Zaria Road – are
no-go areas for law-abiding citizens. Terrorists hold sway. Schools are
so unsafe that the state’s chief security officer, secretly withdrew his son
from school to be taught at Kashim Ibrahim House, the only safe haven in the
entire state.
He has shut down 13 other
schools because of terrorists. El-Rufai, the roaring lion, is now a
lily-livered executive governor, subdued by the same Frankenstein Monster he
fed. What is happening to him is poetic justice, many insist, a deserved
comeuppance for the injustice he has meted out to non-ethnic Fulani in the
state.
A highly distressed CP Muri
narrated his ordeal to IGP Usman thus: “From our records, the schools that have
been attacked and students abducted in Kaduna State from January 2021 to date
alone include: “College of Forestry and Mechanisation, Mando Afaka where 37
students were kidnapped on March 11, 2021 and subsequently rescued.
Green Field University along
Kaduna-Abuja Highway where 23 students were kidnapped on April 20, 2021 and
five of the students were gruesomely killed by their abductors while the rest
were released. Nuhu Bamalli Polytechnic, Zaria where two kidnapping incidents
were recorded, first involving three students on December 14, 2020 who were
later released by their abductors and the second incident was recorded on June
10, 2021 involving two lecturers and seven students.
“The National Centre for
Tuberculosis and Leprosy in Saye, Zaria LGA of Kaduna where eight staff were
kidnapped on July 4, 2021 and Bethel Baptist Academy, Maraban Rido, Kaduna
where 135 students were kidnapped on July 5, 2021 out of which 28 were rescued
and the remaining 107 victims still in captivity.”
To be sure, none of these
students was rescued. They either escaped or were released by their abductors
after their parents paid millions of naira as ransom. In Kaduna, the state is
none existent, literally. Terrorists are the lords of the manor. When in 2018
kidnappers abducted a prominent traditional ruler in the state, Maiwada Raphael
Galadima, the Agwom Adara, and murdered him after demanding N18 million ransom,
el-Rufai chastised the victims rather than going after the villains. Today, the
chicken has come home to roost for both him and Kaduna State – as it has,
indeed, for both Buhari and Nigeria.
Buhari should jettison this
herders-farmers fallacy and wage a decisive war against terrorists. If not, the
fate that has befallen Kaduna State under El-Rufai’s watch will also befall the
entire country and history will be harsh to the memory of Buhari. I hope it is
not too late for him to listen. And to take action.
*Amaechi,
former Editor, Daily Independent, is
the publisher of The Niche newspaper
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